"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair |
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Telegraph at 49th, with BRT (Click for larger view) In Downtown Berkeley. Shattuck at Bancroft, Existing
 Shattuck at Bancroft with BRT
(Click for larger view)
• State your views at public meetings
BRT: The more you know, the less you like it. |
Relevant and Interesting History
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Find more information and links |
Willard Neighborhood Assocation Opposes BRT in Letter to Mayor (see pages 7-9) (pdf)
Very detailed comments on the BRT Draft Environmentall Report (pdf) by Sharon Hudson - Recommended
The Times reports that ridership on mass transit is surging thanks to high gasoline prices. Good. But … as of 2005, only 4.7 percent of American workers took mass transit to work. So even a 10% surge in mass transit ridership would take only around half a percent of drivers off the road.
The point isn’t that nothing can be done — it’s just that serious reductions in driving would require a lot of long-term rearrangement of the way we live. It will come — but not quickly.
(Paul Krugman: "Sick Transit")
And there are, as always in America, the issues of race and class. Despite the gentrification that has taken place in some inner cities, and the plunge in national crime rates to levels not seen in decades, it will be hard to shake the longstanding American association of higher-density living with poverty and personal danger.
Still, if we're heading for a prolonged era of scarce, expensive oil, Americans will face increasingly strong incentives to start living like Europeans — maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of our lives. (Krugman; Stranded in Surburbia)